The penultimate pandas to share about in the Pan Pan Garden 盼盼园 area of the Dujiangyan Panda Base are Zhang Ka 张卡 and her twins, male An Bao 安宝 and female Zhong Zhong 中中. Zhang Ka was born in 2000 so is now 24 years old, it’s likely that these cubs, born in 2022 so almost 2 years old at the time of my visit, will be her last cubs. Zhang Ka has quite a history – she is a wild-born panda who was brought into captivity and has had a huge success in the breeding programme having had many cubs. In 2011 she was involved in being successfully bred and raising a cub in a semi-wild enclosure. This resulted in that cub, a female named Zhang Xiang 张想, to be released into the wild in 2013 as part of the reintroduction programme (first female to ever be released). In 2016 it was reported that she was still doing well and had established her own territory (the pandas released have GPS/tracking collars to gather this information), so hopefully by now she is thriving in the wild and raising cubs of her own.

So, finally making it back to Dujiangyan Panda Base 都江堰中华大熊猫苑! I visited here in both my November 2016 and 2017 trips, so it’s been 6.5 years since I was last there or even in the city. On this trip, my friend who works for the base picked us up at our hotel and very kindly took us to breakfast at the base’s staff canteen and then brought us into the base between 8:30 and 9AM which was just after opening. It was pretty busy with many coaches lined up in the parking lot already. As my friend took us in, I’m not sure the price for this base, but I would expect it to be similar to both Chengdu base and Panda Valley of 55RMB. It was a Tuesday on our visit and it was super busy, the scenes were what I’d expect of a weekend more than a weekday, but most of it was down to the many groups of school students visiting. Unfortunately, two westerns are a big deal, so at some points we were more popular than the pandas with the school kids all wanting to take pictures with us – I don’t mind it for the most part (and could practice some of my Chinese as well), but we are also there to enjoy the pandas and it was getting a bit stressful after a while. The tour groups of adults didn’t stay long, they seemed to just do a quick lap of the base before leaving (we saw people leaving as we were coming in!), but there was then another wave of new tour buses arriving around lunchtime, so it was quite a constant flow but overall quieter in the afternoon as the school groups had also left at this point.